Wednesday, April 7, 2010

“We Will Target and Kill U.S. Citizens Based on Lies and You Will Like It” – Says the New York Times

Here is a powerful essay that explodes with emotion. It's written by a gentleman named Scott Creighton. I wish I could write like this...

"As the American military’s credibility has been cast into the gutter by several recent stories which exposed one lie after the other after the other, the Obama administration is taking the unprecedented step to confirm they feel they have the right to kill any US citizen abroad they determine poses a threat to their imperial agenda… based solely on their say-so.

Secret evidence and the White House’s authorization is enough to arbitrarily kill US citizens under the regime of the Peace Prize “winning” Barack Obama. They state that they want to kill Awlaki, a popular anti-American dissident living in Yemen, because his rhetoric has turned to taking an active hand in orchestrating violence. They don’t offer any proof of this nor do they even state who this violence is directed toward. In fact they offer up no more actual specifics other than to say “he knows what he did”

“The danger Awlaki poses to this country is no longer confined to words,” said an American official, who like other current and former officials interviewed for this article spoke of the classified counterterrorism measures on the condition of anonymity. “He’s gotten involved in plots.” New York Times

In a move that is increasingly less remarkable as the days go by, the New York Times cites an unnamed source and ”secret evidence” as justification for stripping a US citizen of his civil liberties and quite probably his life. In terms of propaganda, the New York Times knows no equal. Not only do they pass this off as an acceptable practice, but they expertly weave into the fabric of the story the way YOU AND I ARE SUPPOSED TO FEEL ABOUT IT.

The official added: “The United States works, exactly as the American people expect, to overcome threats to their security, and this individual — through his own actions — has become one. Awlaki knows what he’s done, and he knows he won’t be met with handshakes and flowers. None of this should surprise anyone.” New York Times

None of this should surprise you, says the New York Times, after all, this is what you expect.

It’s brilliant propaganda which I am sure it will set the tone for this week’s talking points on both sides of the artificial political divide.

On Feb. 12th 2 men and 3 women were killed in a night raid by US Special Forces. Two of the women were pregnant. The soldiers involved used their knifes to dig the bullets out of the women and then a story was concocted that tried to say the women were already dead when they got there, victims of “honor killings”. The New York Times ran with that propaganda story and everything the military said at first about that story turned out to be a lie.

Wikileaks just released a video of an Apache helicopter gunship attack on a crowd of Iraqi civilians and two journalists from 2007 in New Baghdad. The video clearly shows civilians, most all of them unarmed, being targeted and killed in a brazenly callous manner. Then it shows a family in a van showing up to try to help one of the victims being targeted by the gunship and torn to shreds after US soldiers beg for permission to kill more unarmed people. In the front seat you can clearly see two small children. Twenty minutes later the same gunship targets an apartment complex and launches several hell-fire missiles into it even after watching at least 2 unarmed men walk in the front door and in spite of the fact that they can clearly see another innocent, unarmed man walking by the front door right before they fire. Entire families were killed in that building, not “insurgents”. The military covered up that story for years, lying about how the journalists died. Lying about how the children were wounded. Lying about how many victims were armed. Everything the military said about the incident turned out to be a flat-out lie.

The “Umar Fizzlepants” story lacked credibility since day one. Clearly it had been staged as cover for the fact that Obama had given the order to kill a US citizen in a country we aren’t even at war with. In the end, it turns out, that our own intelligence services had to admit that they “allowed” Umar Fizzlepants to board that flight, knowing full well he might be a terrorist. Of course, they didn’t just let him on the plane, they staged the whole thing. But the important part here is that we KNOW they lied about the entire thing right from the start.

Lies, Lies, Lies, and still more Lies. And now, they say we “expect” them to kill anyone they want, any US citizen included, based on nothing more than evidence we can’t see “for national security reasons” and their say-so.

Factor that in with the obviously fabricated recent case of the Hutaree 9, a “homegrown terrorism” plot which the JTTF and the FBI set in motion (and may be completely lying about since there is no recording released so far in which ANY of the suspects talks about killing cops), the McCain Liebermann “belligerent combatant” legislation in the senate and now also in the House, and you have the makings of a rather dangerous mixture of lies, violence, and illegal incarcerations targeting US citizens first and foremost. Jane Harmon, one of the sponsors of the first ”Homegrown Terrorist Act”, summed it up best at the end of the New York Times propaganda piece… certain US citizens are the number one threat to America…

At a panel discussion in Washington on Tuesday, Representative Jane Harman, Democrat of California and chairwoman of a House subcommittee on homeland security, called Mr. Awlaki “probably the person, the terrorist, who would be terrorist No. 1 in terms of threat against us.” New York Times

Now keep in mind, they went out of their way to make the point that they are targeting Awlaki for what he has “done” not just what he has “said” but at the same time they offer no proof of anything he has supposedly done. No proof what-so-ever. So is it all a lie? Why the hell would we believe ANYTHING they say? Are they really just targeting him for what he says? and if so, who is next? Hedges? Greenwald? William Black? Who?

Propaganda runs in terms of campaigns. Lines, talking points, and slogans are simply tools to support an overall agenda and if you can’t see the writing on the wall of this one, you need glasses.

At a time when then general population should be starting to come to at least some of the conclusions we “conspiracy theorists” came to years ago, that the US military is lying through their teeth about what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan and the rest of their imperial campaign across the Middle East, the New York Times comes out and tells us that we should not only support it, but in fact we should “expect” US citizens to be killed or arrested for no other reason that some unidentified source’s say-so for reasons you and I will never know.

That’s fascism.

The Times is working to normalize the full-on fascist state developing right before our eyes."